Finals

2: run.

The dining hall exploded into chaos, and hardly anyone noticed as Kalista sprinted down the side of the room and was gone.

She yanked open the door to the staircase and began to run up them, scaling two at a time. Her heart was pounding and her breaths came short and fast, but her extensive training had paid off, and thankfully, her mind was clear. As she reached the second floor landing, she risked a brief pause at one of the staircase's giant windows and glanced down at the dining hall below. She estimated that about half of the students were left -- the rest must have run, like she had -- and the ones who remained were fighting it out. Some had forks or knives. Some had shards of broken plates. Some, like Kaylee, used only their bare hands.

It was a bloodbath.

The door opened downstairs and Kalista jolted back into motion. The thundering of footsteps echoed from below, yet she didn't pause to look down. Each landing passed in a frantic blur. When she reached the top floor, she burst through the door and sprinted down the hallway.

She knew where to go.

The fifth floor had been her sanctuary for most of her years at the Academy. It was the STEM floor, with labs and greenhouses and even a large aquarium, and she had spent many sleepless nights playing around with the tools in its rooms. Her feet flew fast and steady as she traced her familiar path towards the end of the hall and turned right into the computer lab.

Out of all of the wonders of the Academy, this room was her favorite. Its floor-to-ceiling windows illuminated the space with warm daylight and provided a spectacular view of the lake below. At night, when she came to study frantically for her exams, a single glance to the left would show a velvet sky full of stars. Unlike the conventional computer lab, this one was arranged like a coffee shop, with plush couches behind spacious white desks and some of the most advanced computers that the Collective had to offer. There was even a smoothie station by the door, which had a wide variety of healthy drinks that had gotten Kalista through hundreds of all-nighters.

She hadn't chosen the room for its sentimental value, however.

Careful to listen for any noise in the hallway, she locked the door behind her and immediately climbed up onto a desk. Her fingers were precise and mechanical as she input a code into a crevice above the doorframe and felt a panel pop open.

The security feeds were all monitored from the office, which was on the first floor, but the computer lab housed the interface where those feeds were compiled. Kalista had helped the head security officer with its bugs more than once and knew its programming like the back of her hand. Allowing only a slight grin of victory, she pulled the panel outward to reveal a mess of wires and a small, thin console. Every once in a while, the console would need updating, and she was always the one who was chosen to climb up there and fix it -- small enough to fit inside and smart enough to change it. The space was just big enough for a girl her height to sit in.

Grabbing onto a handle on the ceiling that she had drilled there just for this purpose, she pulled herself up with little effort and slid into the small space. It was slightly claustrophobic, and she knew she would have to climb down every once in a while to stretch her legs. But as of now, it was the safest place to be.

She pulled the panel back inward, but there was no handle on the inside that she could use to shut it. After several seconds of pondering, she grabbed a few of the metal disks beside her and attempted to use them to attract the magnetic latch on the panel's frame. The first one she grabbed attached to the magnet with a clean snap and allowed her to pull the panel inward until it clicked closed.

Done.

Safe in the dark space, Kalista grabbed her phone from her pocket and immediately disabled location services. She was smart, but there were many who were smarter, and she had no doubt that the tech-savvy among them would attempt to use the Academy's phone monitoring to determine the hiding places of their classmates.